Chicken and marinade are commonly kept together in a large container. Many dip their hands into the icy cold 35.degree. Fahrenheit marinade to reach for chicken pieces which is unsanitary. Others drain off the marinade when the chicken is ready to be breaded. This draining is presently a difficult and time consuming process. Usually the container is held over a sink and the marinade is poured out while the lid of the container is used to hold back the chicken.
The marinade and chicken container is very heavy when full, hence it is difficult to lift and awkward to handle.
After the container has been lifted to the sink, there still remains the task of actually draining off the marinade This is a slow and tedious process.
First, the container needs to be held at an angle sufficient for the draining off of marinade. Second, the lid of the container needs to be held in such a way that an opening is formed which is large enough to allow marinade to escape while retaining the chicken inside the container. Third, the container needs to be held over the sink long enough to allow all of the marinade to drain out of the container.
It is often the case that the person marinating will purposely spill out the entire contents of the container into a sink, allowing the marinade to drain off. This could cause sanitary problems and could also break up the chicken pieces when they hit the sink. Marinade solution can be used any number of times in a 24-hour period. However, because no economical method has been found for retaining the marinade after it has once been used, a great deal of marinade is wasted down drains every day.
A problem has been in the breading of the marinated chicken. It is very common for those working at breading chicken not to drain the marinade out of the container at all. It is usually the case that the worker will simply grab out several pieces of chicken with his hands, let most of the marinade drain through his fingers, and then place the chicken on a breading table. When this is done, an extra amount of marinade is usually left on the chicken. The extra marinade causes the breading to "ball up" and become useless.
Breading is far more expensive than marinade, hence, wasted breading can add greatly to the cost of chicken preparation.
My invention is intended to solve all of those problems. The inner receptacle of my invention only needs to be lifted an easy and short distance in order to be mounted on the outer receptacle. The problems associated with the heaviness of the bulky filled containers is eliminated.
In my invention the holding of the container at an angle for a long and tedious draining time is eliminated.
In my invention the lid does not need to be held over a portion of the container top during draining.
In my invention, the marinade draining is all automatic in the sense that it is done by gravity without hand-holding of containers.
With my invention employees will be less tempted to dump chicken into a sink.
A further advantage of my drainer is that it provides an economical method of saving marinade solution so as to be reused later on.
A great deal of breading is also likely to be saved by those using my invention. No longer will employees be tempted to pull chicken out of the icy cold marinade by hand. Instead, they will find it easier to lift my inner container allowing the marinade to drain off first.
A particular objective of my invention is to provide the inner container with drain slots, rather than with drain holes. I experimented with drain holes and found they would not work because the meat tended to plug up the holes. I experimented with 1/2 inch wide slots which was better because the meat would not plug up the 1/2 inch wide slots. This had the disadvantage that chicken wing tips would wedge into the slots causing a time consumption in pulling them out by hand after they have been packed in by the weight of the meat in the load. I now use 1/4 inch wide slots which is ideal for chicken and drains effectively.